Our guest contributor for today is Judy.  Thanks Judy…

We woke to the sound of rain and a power outage this morning so there was no rush to get going. Our 6:30 breakfast didn’t get served until 7:30 but…we are getting used to flexible African time. By 8:00 the rain had stopped and we headed out shortly after that. The road to Mombo, a distance of 25 km, was mostly flat but that was certainly the end of flat for the day. From Mombo, a narrow, but quiet road, rose continuously up into the Usambara Mountains….lush vegetation, steeply terraced plantings and villages bustling with activity. Vendors line the road of every village and although most of the villages we passed today were quite small, they are still very animated with people selling all sorts of fruit and nuts. They would scurry to the buses and surround all new arrivals, including us, with their products.

The contrasts in this country never cease to amaze me…a Jaguar dealership in Dar versus the poverty we saw there, a woman at the door of a mud hut talking on her cellphone. Although we’d love to take photos of the markets, the wide-eyed children, the women in colourful and bright attire, it is difficult to do. The women in general don’t want their pictures taken and “no picha” or “money” are common refrains when you aim the camera… a picture may be worth a thousand words but here it is worth a thousand schillings! There are few tourists in this area and we generate a lot of excitement when we pass through the villages. Children come running from all directions whenever we arrive. When I asked Omari, one of our guides, what they were yelling, he told me they are calling “white people” but we never feel intimidated here – the Tanzanians are extremely friendly and we are almost always greeted with Karibu (welcome) and wide smiles.

We had a delicious lunch in Soni, after 16 km of climbing, prepared by the chef from the Friends of Usambara. Although the temperatures were much milder today, (25-32C) we still sweat buckets in the humidity…a 5-water bottle day. Although the ride after lunch was listed as “rolling”, other than one lovely, long descent, it was basically more climbing to Lushoto. We are all extremely happy to arrive at our hotel for the night, tired and relieved to not have had to carry our panniers (Max included)!

Sixty kilometers doesn’t sound like a challenging ride but in this heat and humidity, with 30 km of climbing and an elevation gain of nearly 1300 m, it was a tough, but spectacular day!

Carole wrote another great article, which I have attached below.  This one is on Zanzibar and Dar es Salaam.  Thanks Carole.

A big warm Jambo (Hello) to all!

Hope you’re all enjoying our cold Canadian air, because here, it is hot!!! We are trying to acclimatize, but it’s going to take time…

For our first day in Zanzibar, our group had a guided tour of Stonetown, and one quickly understands why it is called that. The buildings, the doors, the facades, it all shows the Arabic, Indian and African architectures. Walls are made of carved stones that surround the fish market (hold your breath!), the fruit & vegetable merchant stands and the colourful fabric shops. But most houses are run down, all in various stages of disrepair. And it is HOT! I know, I’ve already said that, but I’m saying it again… We walk around sweating profusely while the locals – all wrapped up in their many layers – look “as cool as cucumbers”. Go figure!

We went for a group lunch at a restaurant called “Two Tables”. Followed our guide through a narrow back alley to a grungy looking door. He knocked, waited until this old toothless man (turns out he was only 64) unlocked the door, invited us in, asked us to take off our shoes (many of us hesitated, but eventually obliged). He then lead us to the second floor where a room with “two tables” and 24 children sitting in a circle, on the carpet (all his grandchildren) greeted us with smiles, chants and prayers. Then, the food started to arrive, course after course, for over two hours… Spicy Indian cuisine (yikes!), lots of deep-fried choices (double yikes!) and gallons of bottled water later, we rolled back to our hotel with no need whatsoever for supper. What an experience!

Next day on the island brought our first bike ride through busy streets and more heat and humidity. The 12 of us were quite the sight with our fancy bikes and spiffy cycling outfits, but never as much as Max and Valerie on their shiny red Co-Motion tandem. Heads were spinning around and they almost caused a few accidents! Our destination was a spice farm where natives took us on a walking tour which included an amazing variety of spices and fruits. Instead of neat rows like in North America, everything is planted in a big mish-mash: red chilli, turmeric,cinnamon, cardamom, vanilla beans, mango, plantanes, coconut and so much more happily grow side by side.

A ton of information was given – which I’ve already forgotten – except for this: women collect henna to draw beautiful designs on their body (that’s to get married our guide told us). Then they laden the fragrant lang lang in their house to keep their husband home. Should their man have a bit of trouble in bed, they feed them ginger (which acts as viagra); and finally, if women want their child to stop nursing, they simply eat a spice called ho ho which makes the breast milk so spicy hot the baby rejects it. Momin also mentioned that women should not feed ho ho to their men unless they wish for some good “ho ho hot” sex! Anyway, that’s about all I can remember.

Our lunch was on a mat, on the dirt floor of a hut; freshly made from what was just gathered, including coconut juice that was just picked by a young African who climbed bare-footed, high up the trunk to cut 12 coconuts (one for each of us). The whole time, he sang “Hakuna Matata” to warn people below of the imminent crash of coconuts! We all agreed it was our best meal to date.
This morning – our bikes heavily loaded with panniers filled to bursting – we cycled to the ferry; a 90 minute crossing to Dar es Salaam and we are immersed in a dirty city of 4 millions! It is an experience that one must simply agree to take “with a grain of salt”. Safari Hotel (a grand name for our 1 star lodging) gave us all a good chuckle.

Today was mostly a move day as well.  We were planning to take the bus within 48 km of Mombo, then get on the bikes and ride the rest of the way.  It didn’t quite work that way.  First we got off to a later start than we wanted.  Then there was the traffic in Dar.  And finally there was the rain.  In short we wimped out and took the bus all the way to Mombo.

It was nice to take the bus out of Dar.  It would have been very difficult and stressful to  fight the traffic riding out of Dar.  In our nice air conditioned bus we just sat back and watched the scenery change.  After the heat yesterday the air conditioned bus was a real treat.  It felt very nice to get out into the countryside.  We passed through lots of little small villages.  I was impressed by how much improvement there was in the last eleven years.  The road was in excellent condition except in the places where it was under active construction.  There was also a lot more heavy equipment used than what we saw eleven years ago.

As we approached Mombo I was reminded how beautiful this country is.  Mombo is right at the foot of the Usambara.  Our hotel is actually about 20 km outside of Mombo – and a very nice hotel it is.  Tomorrow we will have about 20 km of flat riding to Mombo then up the hill.  It is not that steep (around 6% prevailing grade) but it is pretty persistent for 17 km.  One significant change from the trip plan: our gear will be transported up the hill for us.  I tried to convince everyone that we should turn down the offer and ride with full gear just to show that we could.  That one didn’t sell well at all .  It will be good to visit the Usambara again.

Today was a move day.  After breakfast we all needed to separate our biking gear from the rest of our gear.  We turn over all of our non-biking gear to the guides and they will get it to Moshi for us.  That, of course, means that all  of our biking gear needs to go into our panniers.  It is an arduous task.  You don’t want leave anything behind that you will need in the next couple of weeks.  On the other hand, you certainly don’t want to carry anything that you don’t really need.  Tough decisions, but we were all done well before the 10:30 deadline.

So we handled over our non-biking gear than mounted our panniers for the first time.  The bike handles a lot differently when it is fully loaded with 4 panniers.  But we were all raring to go by the 11:00 departure time.  A short 1.5 km ride following the van with our gear to the ferry.    Once at the ferry it was all in Khalifa hands and I’m certainly glad it was.  He and Isa were really earning their money getting us trough customs and onto the boat.  But we finally made it all in good order.  The best part was that when we got to Dar and re-assembled our bikes we all had the same  gear that we started with!  The boat was quite impressive.  A fast catamaran.  A much nicer boat than we are used to with BC ferries.

Once we got to Dar and got our bikes put back together we waited for the van to be loaded. We had another short ride through the streets of Dar to get to our hotel – the Safari.  Dar is not one of my favourite places.  Following a van thru the streets of Dar with 10 other fully loaded bike is also not one of my favourite activities.  But it is a good way to get a good adrenalin buzz.  Kudos to Valerie, I was sure that we were going down once, but she was able to keep us upright.

We all made it to the hotel alright.  We dropped our luggage and then went out for a late lunch / early dinner.  It was good food, but a bit of comedy-of-errors sorting out the order.   Oh well, it’s all good.  Tomorrow we finally begin the real riding.  We will take a bus right after breakfast and spend the morning driving toward Lesotho.  Than after lunch we finish the trip to Mombo on bikes.  Hopefully it won’t be too hot.

Dawn will be our blog contributor for today.  I thing she has done a lovely job of summarizing a delightful day on Zanzibar.  Ross has also contributed one of the many pictures taken at the spice farm.  Take it away Dawn…

We woke as usual to the 5 a.m. call to prayer and then came a surprise. There was a flash of lightning and the rumble of thunder.  The skies opened to wonderful cooling heavy tropicaœrains. 

Today we met at 8:30 for our first cycling day in Zanzibar. By then the rains had stopped and we got to start our day without too much heat. We headed out of Stonetown to tour a spice farm . Cycling on the “wrong” side of the road in sometimes heavy traffic meant we had to keep our wits about us.  Today is Sunday so traffic was supposedly lighter than other days.  There were still a great number of local buses ,which are mini vans or open sided trucks with benches down each side. All were jam packed.  

The spice farm was about 14km and along the way we saw many new sights such as donkey and bovine  drawn carts and just local people living their lives.

The spice farm was not as many of us expected.  There were no manicured rows of single plant species.  Instead we were guided along meandering footpaths where a curry bush might be beside a clove tree, where ginger might be next to cardamon or pepper.  We were treated to many exotic samples to taste. along the way.  Our guides, who cycled out with us and the spice farm workers were entertaining and informative.  Towards the end of the tour we got to watch a young fellow climb a coconut tree , all the time singing Hakuna Matata (don’t worry). It was a very long way up that tree and it swayed with his weight as he neared the top.  He cut 12 coconuts and I think we were all surprised at the force with which they landed and the distance they travelled.   The coconuts were gathered up and we sat around while our guides prepared the coconuts so we each had a snack of coconut milk and flesh.  While we’d been walking the trails our guides had woven headgear for us from palm fronds.  One of us was crowned King of Spices.  Dan, you handled the honour royally!

Next came lunch of local food prepared with many of the spices we’d learned about.  Delicious.  The meal ended with many local fruits.

Our ride back was very hot. The only snag was a huge tree laying across the road which was backing up traffic in both directions.  A truck carrying a huge container had been so tall that it knocked a good part of the tree down.

All in all a very successful first cycling day.

The tour officially begins on the 15th in Zanzibar.  The eight of us from Pemba where late for our the start meeting because of airport issues.  But finally we were all together Ross and Dawn where in a day early and were well settled in.  Judy and Lucas had arrived very early that morning.  Now we are 12.

The first order of business was meeting the guides.  I had meet Khalifa at the airport he is the one in charge of the tour.  In addition we have Isa who will be the bicycling part of the tour.  Khalifa will be with us as well but Isa will be leading.  We will have a third guide on the bike tour, but we will not meet him until the we get to the mainland.  We also have a couple of guides that are just for Zanzibar.  Muumin is based here in Zanzibar.  I believe that he runs his own small tour company.  He is assisted by Mohamed who does most of the presentation on history etc.  They take very good care of us.  One is always at the front of the group and another is sweep.  And they are a lot better at it than we are.  You can’t get behind the sweep.

On Saturday the 16th we did a tour of Stone town (that is the old section of Zanzibar).  We went to the old slave market and looked at the various monuments to the ending of that horrific practice.  We visited the catholic church built on the center of the old slave market that was erected to celebrate the ending of slavery in Zanzibar in (I believe 1873).  We visited a couple of the chambers where the slaves were held awaiting auction.  From there we went to the market.  It is a very large market.  My impression is that it is more of a wholesale market.  The tour also took in the several other sites such as the old fort.  My apologies for being short of details but I had to drop out of the tour and get back to the hotel.   The tour culminated with what I am told was a fantastic lunch.  A local Indian family opens there home to tours and other groups.  I recall going to the same home when I as here eleven years ago.  The crowd was apparently very impressed with the meal – some 7 courses of it.

After lunch it was bike assembly time.  Tomorrow we ride.  (A modest ride to the spice farm and back).  The guides were very helpful in assembling the bikes.  Which is good thing since there were some issues.  Dan and Robin drew the short straw again.  They had a local bike shop box they bike in preparation for the trip.  I suspect there me be a discussion with that shop when they get home.  Pedals were just thrown in the box.  And as we all know boxes get holes in them.  You guessed it – only one pedal made it.  Unfortunately it was a Speedplay, so no chance of replacing it.  However Morman was able to scurry around and find replacement platform pedals.  I think there were several other issues as well, but the real kicker was the skewers.  They did have 2 skewers.  That is the good part.  The bad part is that the weren’t the one for their bike.  Both were rear skewers and of course a rear skewer is way too long for a front wheel.  Poor Morman is off again in search of a skewers.  This time he wasn’t quite a lucky.  Thinks looked pretty bleak.  Enter white knight sir Pringle with spare skewer in hand.  (Who carries a spare skewer?  Apparently John and Bernie).  In the end all was good and we are ready to roll tomorrow.

For todays article I’ve decided to take the lazy way out.  Carole wrote up here description of Pemba Island and has graciously allowed me to publish it here.  Since it is much better than anything I could have written I’ll turn it over to Carole …

From a cyclist’s perspective:

The roads! What can I say about the roads? Even deep potholes the size of a pig and mega-crevasses are not strong enough words… It somewhat resembles the aftermath of an earthquake. Also, lots of short but very steep hills (difficult to manage unless you have tons of experience with moguls and slaloming). And, of course, you have to ride on the “wrong” side of the road! Need I say more? 

From a mother’s perspective:

All the children, absolutely beautiful children! Little girls dressed in colourful cloths; naked toddlers running around with the chickens; young boys riding old beaten up bicycles, often two or three on the same bike… no helmets (no surprise there, but it would still make all Canadian mothers cringe); babies being nursed on the dusty doorsteps of mud houses; even saw a boy – three years old at the most – confidently walking down the main road, all alone; around the corner, another child hefting a huge pot on top of his head. But most importantly: the smiles! Those incredible smiles… everywhere!!

From an artist’s perspective:

Lush green forests, turquoise and emerald striped sea waters, fishing boats of all shapes, large mats covered with fragrant cloves drying in front of humble huts, families busy at various chores, houses built of coral stone with straw roofs, bush babies (they look like a mix of monkey and cat) running and playing noisily on top of our sleeping quarters. All in all, it’s another world… literally. I feel like a sore (white) thumb sticking out, but I am definitely blessed to be here.

At dinner last night, John asked what locals lived on… A few are employed at the rustic resort where our group is staying, but what about the rest?

Fishing and farming was the answer: potatoes, tomatoes, onions, cassava (a type of sweet potato), vanilla beans, spices, but mostly CLOVES! Aaaaaah the scent along ALL the roads! People are definitely not rich here, but they look happy, content… and healthy!! Thanks to them, we could enjoy fresh squid, king fish, octopus, yellow tail, lobster (to name a few) for our lunches and suppers. A real treat! Come to think of it, no meat was ever served to us. And breakfast brought the freshest eggs (from all the chickens roaming) and the most deliciously juicy mango and pineapple.

Before I close, a word or two on our snorkelling adventures: a few of us did a lot of snorkelling right off the lovely deck overlooking the ocean. The water is so pleasant you can stay in until you look like a shrivelled prune. But this morning, all eight of us embarked on an old raft that took us to a very interesting coral reef bursting with fabulous under-water life. We snorkelled to our heart’s content… Could’ve done without the many jelly fish stings though! Lucky for us, they were small ones, so nobody got zapped too badly. But let me tell you those little burgers still generate a powerful burn! I know cauz I got hit at least a dozen times. Still wouldn’t have missed it for the world.

On that note, I will bid you KWAHERI (good bye in Swahili) and till next time…

Take care and WARM hugs from Africa

On 10 Jan 2016 we began our trip to Tanzania.   Valerie and I started our trip from the Victoria Airport.  We were soon joined by John and Patty. 

From Victoria it was a short flight to Vancouver.  In Vancouver we were joined by Denise.  So far so good.  We were also to be joined by Dan and Robin from Seattle.  Much to our surprise, Ross and Dawn also showed up.  They were traveling on a different flight and planning to spend a couple of days in Amsterdam, but as it happens their departure gate was just the next gate over.  So briefly we had 9 of our group of 12 together.

Eventually Dan and Robin showed up with quite a tale to tell.  When the went to board their flight to Vancouver passports were checked as is customary.  “You don’t have a visa for Tanzania” the clerk pointed out.  They, of course responded that they planned to get a visa at the airport in Zanzibar.  Our hosts in Tanzania had advised us to follow this approach since it a lot easyier than sending your passport away and risk loosing it, and it is explicitly permitted by the Tanzanian government on the web site.  Nonetheless it only take one clerk with a bad attitude to ruin your holiday.  Fortunately after much begging, pleading and arguing someone with a cooler head decided that they could get on the plane after all.

As Dan and Robin were regailing us with their tale it began to become apparent that the next store was brewing.  From Vancouver the 7 of us were to fly to Paris where we would meet Carole.  In Paris we had a two hour layover before heading on to Nairobi.  As we set in the Vancouver airport watching our flight be delayed first 10 minutes than 20 and so on, we began calculating just how quickly we could make it through the Paris airport.  Once our delay expanded past two hours it was pretty clear today was not our day.

So after 9 hours or so with very little sleep we made it to Paris just in time to see that our flight to Nairobi was closed for boarding.  So us – and a hundred or so other people who had missed their connection – got in line.  New plan: spend the day in the Paris airport, fly to Amsterdam, catch a flight for Nairobi and finally onto Zanzibar by 9:15.  Only 9 hours later than the original plan – not too bad we thought.  All we hand to sacrifice was our comfy bed at the Garden Lodge in Zanzibar.

Off course Air France was late with our flight departing Paris as well, but only enough to scare us.  We only had to run a little bit to make our connecting flight in Amsterdam.  Than another 8 hour flight to Nairobi.  In Nairobi it was my turn in the barrel.  In our first of two passes thru security we encounter a very polite young man who wanted to confiscate our disk brakes.  I remove the disk brakes and take them in carry-on so that they don’t get bent.  Bent is bad, missing is a whole lot worse.  If we gave those disks holiday over – you can’t stop a tandem by dragging your feet and the chance of replacing a place of big disks in Zanzibar was not a prospect I wanted to face.  Fortunately after 10 minutes of begging and plead (and a request to talk to his supervisor) our young man finally agreed to take our lethal weapons and go.

Our 8:00 flight from Nairobi to Zanzibar was via Kilimanjaro airport.  That was not something I had anticipate.  Apparently it hadn’t been anticipated by the people writing the schedule either as our 9:15 arrival time turned into 11:00.  So now we had to start worrying about our 2:00 flight to Pemba.  How do we get all our big luggage into town and get back to the airport by 2:00.   The airline did their part in reducing that problem by loosing half our luggage.  Only 3 of 6 bikes made it.  Plus various other pieces of luggage lost in action.  The joys of flying.  Hopefully everything will show up by the time we get back from Pemba.

Another half hour flight and our bleary eyed and sleep deprived travelers were finally in paradise.  Pemba is truly a beautiful place.  Our resort is very remote (1.5 hour drive from the airport) and a very lovely place.

Welcome to the tour blog for our CCCTS tour to Tanzania.  The tour will begin on January 15^th in Zanzibar Tanzania.  It will end on February 6th in Moshi Tanzania.  A number of us are doing a pre-tour adventure to Pemba Island and/or a post-tour safari.  We might throw a page or two in this blog about those adventure as well.

The participants in this adventure are: Carole Laflamme, Dan Carey, Dawn Ens, Denise Howes, John Pringle, Judy Delogne, Lucas Delogne, Max McClanahan, Paddy Miller, Robin Howe, Ross Ens, and Valerie Chu.  Your blog author for this adventure will be Max McClanahan.